Community Leadership 4.0: Impacting a World Gone Wiki
As society changes, so must leadership practices, says Carolyn Corbin, president of the think tank Center for the 21st Century, in Community Leadership 4.0. She describes the skills that a twenty-first-century leader must have to navigate globalization and nonstop technological change.
According to Corbin, cities and towns in the nineteenth century existed in a Community 2.0 phase, in which community life was static and travel was limited. With the rise of railroads, automobiles, and airplanes, Community 3.0 set in: People took to visiting other places frequently.
On the horizon is yet another paradigm shift: Community 4.0, in which technology erases geographic distance altogether and raises social and intellectual capital to all-time highs. People can live where they choose and telecommute for employers near or far, while quality of life surpasses that of any prior era. No community on earth has yet reached Community 4.0, but almost any can if it adopts a global mind-set that embraces diversity, risk, inclusiveness, and innovation.
For communities that have long operated within the comfort zones of established authority and the status quo, such a mind-set represents a transformation. Community leaders must help usher it in by exercising Community 4.0 Leadership. Corbin describes this leadership style as the ability to anticipate tomorrow, to think problems through, to thrive amid chaos, to understand people, and to promote collaboration. She then presents a process that any leader can use to determine if his or her own leadership style is sufficiently 4.0 and how to improve it if it is not.
Corbin wrote Community Leadship 4.0 with aspiring leaders of all kinds in mind. Whether they are heading up businesses, nonprofit groups, cities, regions, or countries, they will likely find much helpful coaching on how they and those whom they lead can stay ahead of the curve.
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